Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 97

W ORLD W AR O NE (1914 - 1918) INCLUDING THOSE WHO DIED LATER AS A RESULT OF THIS WAR

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name ROBERT HUGH RIDSDALE (Gunner)

Lef SES 1907

Roll Number 1228 Died 04:06:1916

Set / House D

Arrive SES 19026

Where BATTLE OF LOOS, FLANDERS Serving with CANADIAN FIELD ARTILLERY

Age 21

Buried Railway Dugouts Burial Grounds, Transport Farm, Leper Remembered Canadian Virtual War Memorial, Folkestone Kent War Memorial, The St. Edward’s School Shape (Wooden Plaque) and the Cloisters Stone Memorial Born 1895 in Whatlington, Sussex, the fourth son of a clergyman, one other brother also attended St. Edward’s. He only stayed one year before completing his education at Dover College. He was mainly remembered at St. Edward’s for his excellent singing voice, when he left he was in the IVth Form. He left for Canada around 1911 to farm there and when war broke out, he enlisted as a Gunner in the Canadian Field Artillery, Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1914. He returned to England in 1916 and was stationed near Shorecliffe near his family, until ordered to France where he died on the Western Front three weeks later. He was a at first reported as ‘missing’ during the Battle of Loos in April 1916, later confirmed as dead. He met his death ‘in an act of heroism volunteering to carry munitions to a trench in the firing line and then again volunteering to fetch water for the Company through a storm of shot and shell’ (Chronicle). ‘We watched him go and then saw him no more nor could we afterwards find any trace of him’ (fellow soldier). His body was eventually recovered two months later.